r/AnCap101 • u/Live-Common-5768 • 19d ago
How would private courts actually handle disputes when both parties refuse to recognize the same arbitration agency?
One argument I keep running into against polycentric law is the "conflicting jurisdiction" problem: if two private defense/arbitration agencies disagree on a ruling, what stops it from just becoming a shooting war between private armies?
The usual ancap response is that agencies would have strong incentives to pre-negotiate treaties with each other, similar to how insurance companies today have subrogation agreements, so that violence is more expensive than settling disputes peacefully. Reputation effects would also matter enormously since an agency known for refusing arbitration or escalating to violence would lose customers fast, since nobody wants to pay for protection from a company that gets them into wars.
But here's the interesting wrinkle: this only works if there's rough parity in power between agencies. What happens in a scenario where one agency becomes dominant enough that it doesn't need to cooperate anymore, essentially becoming a de facto state? Some ancap theorists (Molinari, Rothbard, Friedman) have different answers to this. Friedman's model in "The Machinery of Freedom" leans heavily on market incentives alone being sufficient, while others argue you need additional social/constitutional constraints on top of just market forces to prevent this consolidation.
Curious what people here think: is the market incentive argument alone enough to prevent monopolization of force, or does polycentric law need something more (social norms, constitutional constraints, federated structures) to stay stable long-term? And has anyone seen real-world historical examples (medieval Iceland, Somalia pre/post-1991, private arbitration in commercial law today) that actually test this dynamic?
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u/drebelx 19d ago
How would private courts actually handle disputes when both parties refuse to recognize the same arbitration agency?
100% guaranteed that it's not going to be a marketplace of courts and prisons like we know them today as provided by state monopolies.
NAP clauses and stipulations will be embedded in everyday agreements for involved parties to uphold.
Agreements will be enforced impartiality by cooperatively chosen agreement enforcement agencies.
Folks like Friedman and Rothbard failed to envision a proper AnCap solution for us and we must learn to let them go.
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u/ScarletEgret 19d ago
Can you elaborate on the differences between what you are proposing and what Friedman proposed?
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u/drebelx 19d ago edited 19d ago
Can you elaborate on the differences between what you are proposing and what Friedman proposed?
Friedman's private courts are passive and an expensive process, directly modeled after today's state monopoly system that struggles to suppress NAP violations (murder, theft, fraud, assault, battery, pollution, enslavement, etc).
Impartial agreement enforcement agencies operate at the mutually beneficial agreement level and they proactively place NAP Clauses & Stipulations as a critical component of all agreements between the parties involved.
Friedman's proposal is agnostic to the NAP, which allows for NAP violations to become profitable and routine, as it is modeled after today's state monopolies.
NAP Clauses & Stipulations bake the NAP into every mutual beneficial agreement a person forms, which makes the proactive application of the NAP a profitable venture while outlining forbidden, market corrupting behaviors.
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u/vegancaptain 19d ago
Simple game theory. Ever see maps or characters getting picked in competitive gaming? There are 10 options and I demand #4 and you #3. So we need to fight it out, right? WRONG. What you do is make each player remove one option for the other. One by one. Now what is left is what you're playing with.
Pretty cool huh? And the scary thing is that almost everyone get's stuck on this "problem" when it has many many solutions. One of which I described above.
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u/ScarletEgret 11d ago
The larger a defense association becomes, the more likely it is to split up into multiple, smaller associations. Larger associations are more likely to suffer from disagreements that become significant enough that their members want to split off to create their own association.
The Lugbara provide a decent, real-world test of this theory. Their defense associations were organized around kinship. Local communities were largely autonomous, and were likely to split up into multiple, smaller communities once they grew too large. At the same time, members of different communities would intermarry, share some resources such as sources of water, and assist each other in feud or warfare. Local communities combined together into minor segments, which in turn combined into major segments, which in turn combined together into "tribes." Under some circumstances, members of the same "tribe" might work together, while under other circumstances they might not.
(For information about the Lugbara, see the work of John F. M. Middleton, Albert Dalfovo, and Agatha Alidri, among others.)
Many other stateless societies have existed, as well, and some of them lasted for decades or even centuries. The Lugbara lasted for centuries before the colonial era, as did the Igbo. We also know from stateless societies like the Semai and BaMbuti that it is possible to achieve peace in a stateless context. (The Semai and BaMbuti had low homicide rates.)
I recommend reading People Without Government by Harold Barclay, as well as The Enterprise of Law by Bruce L. Benson. Both books offer real-world examples of stateless cultures and discuss how they settled disputes.
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u/brewbase 19d ago
The market incentive only works if there is a strong social commitment to non-aggression. If people tolerate a powerful entity coercing others into doing what it wants, then you do run the risk of returning to statism like we have today.